


On the Usefulness of Jump Scares as a Boyfriend Testing Device

by sextonviolets (fairbreeze)



Series: YOI Halloween Week 2017 [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Haunted Houses, M/M, YOI Halloween Week, cuties being cute, might be gen, might be pre-relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 15:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12708036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairbreeze/pseuds/sextonviolets
Summary: Michele lets Emil accompany he and Sara to a haunted house, thinking that Emil's going to learn something important about Sara.  Michele learns something instead.





	On the Usefulness of Jump Scares as a Boyfriend Testing Device

**Author's Note:**

> This is the longer, edited version of my story for YOI Halloween Week Day 1 - Haunted Houses.

Michele originally agrees just to see the look on Emil's face when he realizes his plan has backfired.

They're all here for Skate America—it's October and it's close enough to Halloween that haunted houses are everywhere. Michele isn't very fond of them, but Sara really loves to go to anything scary. She was always the one when they were little kids who would be telling the other kids ghost stories and trying to scare their friends—so he was already planning to go with her to one that wasn't terribly far away from the hotel. Emil just… kind of invited himself along, even through Michele's scowling face, but Michele didn't fight as hard as he could have because he knew what Emil was thinking.

Sara, he knows, looks _exactly_ like the kind of girl who would be scared at a haunted house and cling onto the nearest object while she screamed. He's almost positive that Emil's looking forward to being clung to, getting to play the concerned _boyfriend_ role, getting to hold her in the dark under the guise of making her feel safe, like some kind of pervert. But Michele knows the truth. 

Sara does scream a lot in haunted houses… but it's more the delighted kind. She jumps on her own a little when things leap out at her, but she doesn't cling. She's always entirely too fascinated to be a fainting maiden and is usually spending the seconds after a good scare trying to see how they hid themselves or already darting around the corner, eager for the next thing. If Emil thought he was going to get to play the hero, here, he was sorely mistaken—and for once, Michele wouldn't have to do a thing about it other than watch. Maybe then Emil would figure out how badly suited he was for Sara and stop showing up around the two of them at every skating competition.

(The ones where Sara wasn't skating at the same event were the worst. Emil was always extra chummy then, like somehow he could worm his way to Sara by getting in Michele's good graces while she wasn't around. As though flinging an arm around his shoulder or his waist while he got dragged somewhere was somehow _charming_.)

It doesn't happen that way. 

It doesn't happen that way because, while it's true that Michele knows Sara better than anyone, he knows next to nothing about _Emil_. He doesn't know his favorite color, for instance, or his opinions about sharks or kittens, or his favorite gelato shop. Or, more pertinent to his current situation, _what he's like in haunted houses._

Because what Michele finds out is that Emil _is_ the kind of person to cling to someone in a haunted house. He finds this out when Emil attempts to climb him like a tree the first time something jumps out at them, screaming a little bit. It just kind of… happens. Michele puts his arm around him and hangs on and that just kind of happens, too, because otherwise Emil's going to fall, or send both of them to the ground. He doesn't even really register it, he's strong enough to do it so there's no real danger of him dropping Emil and he climbs down on his own after each scare, only to end up back halfway up Michele at the next one.

Sara, as predicted, is having the time of her life.

It's not until they get to the end and they're leaving that the girl in the group behind them touches Michele's arm and says, 

"Y'all are so cute. I wish my boyfriend was like that with me," and Michele suddenly backwards processes everything that's just happened. The girl runs off to join up with her friends, oblivious to what she's just misread and Michele turns to Emil, blinking, prepared to laugh it off.

Except Emil's not meeting his eyes and there's a riot of a blush across his cheeks and he looks more chagrined and ashamed than he does like he's about to laugh, and the noise dies in Michele's throat. 

_Oh._

Several things come into varying degrees of focus very quickly, barely in the span of a breath: all the times Emil has spent around him when Sara wasn't there, all of the times he's called out to the two of them, Michele's name first, all the times when he's chosen to sit across from him rather than next to him, which Michele has always read as him hoping Sara would sit next to him but now looks a lot more like wanting to look at Michele. He thinks about some of the things he's said about Katsuki and Nikiforov carrying on at competitions and how Emil's never joined in. He always presumed he was just indifferent to it, or was paying more attention to Sara. Now he's re-evaluating what Emil might have been reading into those comments.

"Sorry," it's rare for Emil to not be smiling or smirking, but he looks unusually dismal at the moment, "I didn't mean to embarrass you. I didn't realize how frightening it was going to be…" Michele's not sure if he really wants to encourage this, doesn't immediately trust that it's not some kind of long con for his sister. But this version of Emil isn't one that he likes. He's supposed to be the smiling, exuberant one, like Sara. Otherwise, what is someone quiet and tough like Michele _for_?

"Tch. He's not a very good friend if he doesn't try to comfort her, don't you think? Nevermind a good boyfriend." Emil looks up at him, surprised, but at least he's _looking_ at him again, doesn't look so defeated. Michele sighs softly, "Look, it's the least I could do, right?"

The grin that slowly blooms on Emil's face is ridiculous, over the top, and completely unwarranted.

(Michele can feel the blush heat across his cheeks.)


End file.
